Peter Lovesey - The Vault

She shook her head, still watching the sow.

"Where, then?"

"Van."

He'd seen a tractor and some farm machinery where he'd parked the car. No van.

"Over there," said Winnie, gesturing in the general direction of the fields, but without taking her eyes off the sow.

He remembered seeing a caravan with a tent attachment on the far side of the field as he drove in.

She turned and jumped off the crate. She'd seen enough of the sow. "What shall we do next?"

Such confidence. He said, "I was about to leave. Aren't there any grown-ups about?"

"Don't know. Do you want to see the Muppets?"

"Watch TV, you mean? I'd really like to, but I don't have time today."

"Not telly Muppets, stupid. Real ones," said Winnie. She gave him one of those challenging looks children have for adults, daring him to disbelieve.

"Some of your toys?" This was not a good idea.

"No, silly. I'll show you." She walked a few steps and looked round to see if he was following.

He took a last look at the scene. The whole yard was still deserted. Even the cat had gone. He let Winnie lead him away from the farm. Not, he discovered with some relief, in the direction of the caravan, but towards a spinney, following the mill stream.

The child ran ahead, obviously familiar with the path. Diamond had to step out briskly. Butterflies swooped and soared and a startled pheasant scuttled out of the cover and crossed his path.

The water mill came into view, just. It was well camouflaged by creepers, a building long since fallen into disuse. Once it would have been used as a fulling mill, making the local cloth stronger and more compact. Winnie ignored it and ran on.

She stopped finally at another ivy-clad structure that must have been associated once with the production of wool and cloth. The miller's cottage maybe. This building was better hidden than the mill, but Winnie was familiar with it from the way she ran confidently to a window and stood on tiptoe to look in.

"See?"

He caught up with her. Surprisingly, the window was intact. In fact, it must have been cleaned recently. The interior was dark, and he screwed up his eyes to make out anything at all. Then he felt a gathering of tension as he saw what so excited the little girl. The place was fitted out like a coat check, with stands and hangers, except that instead of coats suspended from the hangers, there were weird and mis-shapen figures with heads hanging grotesquely and limp, shrunken bodies.

His first impulse was to drag the child away from the ghoulish spectacle. But she was clearly exhilarated by it, and he saw that she had been right, for these were puppets with the faces of people, animals and fantasy creatures. Some were lifesize, some quite small. Further in, were wood puppets on strings.

Winnie was singing the theme music from the Muppet Show, swaying rhythmically.

"Who does this belong to?" Diamond asked, knowing the answer.

To the same tune, she sang, "Don't know… Don't know. Don't know."

"Have you seen the man who comes here?"

She didn't answer.

He walked around the building, trying to see in, but the other windows were boarded, the door fastened with a padlock. "Well, you've solved a mystery, Winnie," he said when he came back to her. "I didn't need a grown-up after all."

"Do you want to go in?" she asked, looking up at him with her steady brown eyes.

"In here?"

"He keeps the key under that thing."

A boot scraper made of bristles mounted in wood. He looked underneath and found she was right.

The key fitted the padlock.

Winnie pushed past him when he drew the door open. "Hold on," he warned. "We don't know what's in there."

But Winnie knew. She was already inspecting the puppets, skipping up and down the racks, lifting faces and pulling strings, humming her tune again.

It was a kids' treasure-house. Along the walls were tea-chests crammed to overflowing with the materials the puppets were made from, rolls of latex, sponge rubber, bright-coloured, glittery fabrics, gauze, coils of wire, balsawood, spray-cans, marker pens, wigs, beards and moustaches. At the far end was an old metal filing cabinet with a basket of golden eggs on top.

Diamond tried the top drawer, hopeful of finding some correspondence. Surely an enterprise like this had to have some organisation. But the drawer had no files. It was filled with cans of paint. And the lower drawers contained only string, newspapers and pots of glue.

"Careful with that, Winnie." She was swinging on the tentacles of an octopus, stretching them alarmingly. "I think we'd better leave now."

"Don't want to."

"We've had our fun now."

"Haven't."

He started walking towards the door. "I'm going, anyway, and I'll have to shut you in if you're not coming."

"Don't care."

By the door, hanging from a nail in the wall, he found something helpful at last. An office-style appointments calendar. Someone had scribbled in the names of places and organizations, with times. He checked to see if there was an entry for Saturday. Bath Rotarians, 11-5, Victoria Park. The day Wigfull had been attacked.

Thursday, the day of Peg Redbird's murder. Blank.

Today, then. Monday. Little Terrors, 11 a.m. What on earth was he to make of that? From Bath Rotarians to Little Terrors in one weekend. Quite a comedown.

"What does it say?"

Winnie was at his side, not choosing after all to be left alone with the puppets.

"I don't know," he said.

"Can't you read?" she asked.

"I mean I don't know what it is. It says Little Terrors."

"Don't you know?" said Winnie with a superior air. "It's a play place in Frome. I been there hundreds of times."

LITTLE TERRORS.

The old market town of Frome was a mere eight miles south of Stowford. Diamond knew it well-or so he thought. He hadn't heard of Little Terrors.

Neither had Leaman when he called him on the phone. "What is it, sir-a toyshop?"

"A play place."

"Like a park, you mean?"

"Don't you know what a play place is?"

"With swings and things?"

It had been easier discussing this with Winnie. "You're a detective. Find out."

They arranged to meet on the Frome town bridge. Leaman was to come with clear directions to Little Terrors, whatever it turned out to be.

After this fresh tweak to the investigation, Diamond drove down the A36 with the Muppet tune refusing to go out of his head and his thoughts jigging to it. Who would have expected the violence done to Wigfull to link up with puppets and a play place?

There was a strong temptation to make the connection with Uncle Evan, the puppeteer Joe Dougan had spoken about. But what connection could that be? Uncle Evan was not really in the frame for Peg Redbird's murder or the attack on Wigfull. He was simply one of the people who had once owned Mary Shelley's copy of Milton.

Who was Uncle Evan anyway? His real name had not emerged so far. From Joe's account, he was a fortyish hippie with John Lennon glasses and a pony-tail hairstyle who got his bookings through the Brains Surgery at Larkhall. He'd bought the book at Noble and Nude some years ago and sold it on to Oliver Heath, the old gent with the shop in Union Passage. Heath had called him a multi-talented young man-"young", presumably, from the perspective of eighty years or more.

If it was Uncle Evan's puppet workshop at Stowford, who was it who had crossed the fields towards it some time Saturday afternoon or evening? Wigfull, for sure. But who else? Evan himself, returning from the show for the Bath Rotarians? Why would he approach it on foot across the fields rather than driving straight there as Diamond himself had just done? The footpath route made no sense. He'd have a vanload of equipment with him.